HomeSchooling
That is part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you're not alone and isolated from anyone. You belong. - F. Scott Fitzgerald
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always something.
It’s always something. Isn’t it? At least, it seems that way around here. There is always something that keeps my day from running as intended. That stops me from checking off every little line on my to-do list. That makes our homeschool day run less structured than I dreamed while lying in bed the night before. Today it was a trip to the doctor for me and a diagnosis of bronchitis. Yesterday it was four little sick kids. Tomorrow it will be Otto’s doctor’s appointment. And the next day – well, I can only imagine. It really is – always something. But I am slowly trying to embrace the truth…
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How To Win Friends & Influence People: Jr. Edition
We visited our favorite museum last week. Hands on! in Hendersonville. Thanks to my sweet dad our family can visit that wonderland any day we choose this year with our handy-dandy museum membership. (That sounded trite. It wasn’t. I seriously am so thankful for that gift and so thankful for the museum and I wish someone was paying me to say this stuff, but they so aren’t.) As I was saying . . . We played at the museum. I took a lot of photos using a new technique Page showed me the last time he and his family were visiting. Fox discovered paints and felt it was perfectly acceptable…
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Art. Found.
At the School of Keigley we probably place a heavier-than-some-might-consider-necessary emphasis on art. We like to smear our many small hands across canvas and hang it on our walls. We like to listen to music and draw what we think we hear. It’s how I want our homeschool to look. It’s what I want it to be about. This week we tried Found Art. Art that requires no money and no trip to the supply store. (Partly because it fits our budget, partly because we have all been too sick to attempt heading out in public and partly because I think it’s important to use what is in front of…
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at this house
At this house things like this happen . . . We bake gingerbread cookies with joy and enthusiasm. Eager to get to shaping and cutting out our gingerbread people. Only to realize a few minutes later that the recipe calls for the dough to sit in the freezer for over an hour. Once that hour passes, children step up to the butcher block, less eager and with no desire to plow through multiple cookie cutting sessions. Which means that we ended up with one dozen adorable gingerbread boys and Christmas trees and two dozen gingerbread blobs.
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Gingerbread Houses at Grove Park
The Christmas Chain has been ripped open every morning with eager anticipation. The words on the little paper strips have led us to watching a few more Christmas classics – like Pee Wee’s Christmas Special. (Yeah, I don’t believe that’s considered a classic at any home but ours. It’s an insane little piece of 80’s/90’s television. Please, please, confide to me that someone else has watched this show so I won’t feel as if our family is odd alone.) We’ve baked banana bread and drawn Christmas cards for our neighbors. We’ve visited our local children’s museum and created gingerbread houses. But there have also been some paper requests that have…
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the christmas chain
Every family has something like this – don’t they? You know . . . some count-down-the-days-until-Christmas-arrives sort of system. I’ve seen exquisitely decorated ones, numbered do-dads with a series of intricate doors and surprises, and even a chocolate for every day of December one. They all look good to me. But I’m pretty sure the appearance is not the point. Or at least I hope so. Because this year our family took the basic route. The classic old paper chain – one link for every day until Christmas day. (The great thing about having primarily younger children is that even old ideas are new to them. Which is why slap…
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A Little Drive South
Sometimes when we visit friends for an overnight stay I feel as if the word invasion is more appropriate than visit. I mean – there are eight of us after all. Eight. Of. Us. Eight. That’s instant gratuity at restaurants. That’s no-way-we-can-all-ride-in-one-car-with-another-family-to-save-gas. That’s a party. (Whether a party was planned or not.) But we are somehow fortunate enough to have amassed a fair amount of friends who willingly open their doors to our chaos and hug our necks as we clutter their homes with our suitcased possessions. This week we crash landed at the home of Tyler & Amy and their two very handsome young sons. What a wonderful field…
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big benefits
“So how many of these children are yours?” I hear that question almost every time I leave my home and venture forth into the world as we know it. Grocery shopping takes more than an hour. (A lot more than an hour.) In part because I have five young children with me. Also in part because I am sorting through coupons, doing (very) slow mental math and calculating good deals. And also in part because I am stopped frequently by strangers. Yes, I know I look as if I am running a daycare. (I kind of am. I just make no income from said daycare and the students are in…
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hawke: a running/ jumping/ reading miracle
My boy. My Hawkeye. He no longer has a mohawk. Which makes me sad. But when I last trimmed the hawk, the Hawke would not sit still under the hair trimmers and I managed to mangle the hawk past all recognition as a legitimate hairstyle. He’s just a mess of a little man. But I love him. So much. He can read. Seriously read. Looking at a cook book sitting on our counter, he says, “Mom – is this Southern Fixin’s?” (Which might sound like a corny name for a cookbook. But man, the recipes are amazing. It’s my go-to cookbook for all things delicious.) Sitting on the counter (I…
Keep Reading . . .
that magic moment
weekend ramble (the stillest of weekends)
swimming in the deep end
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playing along
Yesterday afternoon I stopped what I was planning to do (wash that two-days-soaking dirty pot in the sink) and allowed myself to be caught up in a game with my children. It was time for copywork and I overheard the game plan of the gaggle of small humans I am raising. (Is it really overhearing when you are in the same room and it is your own children speaking loudly enough for your neighbors to hear?) The kids were staging some kind of involved game of police officer. (Remember when you called every game by its title? Grown Up. Mommies. Church. School. Grocery Store.) Well. This game was called Police.…
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autumn. out there.
I might be making a terrible mistake. I might be doing homeschool really really badly. I am not sure. But it’s fall. Autumn. (If you like the fancy pants name of the season. And I’m all for any season that has two names. Just like any kid with two names. Or more. You know how I roll.) It’s beautiful outside. Leaves are literally drifting to the ground all around our yard in an idyllic fashion. You don’t need a sweatshirt but jeans feel great. A crunching sound is created under little size 11 feet. It’s just too perfect out there to be in here. So I keep shooing all of…
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The Art of Beethoven
Sometimes I get homeschool so wrong. And sometimes I get it a little better than that. But mostly I am in the middle of the mundane. And I get weighed down with the lists I fail to complete the schedules I forget to follow the mess and mire that swirls and settles on our house of a Monday. I can get pretty lost pretty fast. Which is why moments like the following can shock the sunshine right back into my day. I have this idea for our homeschool for a weekly music lesson. (And by “I have this idea” I really mean “Charlotte Mason had this idea”.) We study one…
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It’s Not So Mysterious
I have three brothers. We grew up on the same dairy farm in Virginia. We had the same parents all of our lives. But despite all that we are pretty different people. We grew up the same but we grew up different. And I used to think that was so mysterious. So hard to comprehend. I kept asking the question . . . How can four kids be raised in the same environment, in the same home, by the same parents, and still be so different from one another? It’s taken me a lot of years and six children of my own to find the answer. (Or maybe not to find…
